Image Sitemap Indexing Issue
-
Hello Folks,
I've been running into some strange issues with our XML Sitemaps.
- The XML Sitemaps won't open on a browser and it throws the following error instead of opening the XML Sitemap. Sample XML Sitemap - www.veer.com/sitemap/images/Sitemap0.xml.gzError - "XML Parsing Error: no element foundLocation: http://www.veer.com/sitemap/images/Sitemap0.xmlLine Number 1, Column 1:"2) Image files are not getting indexed. For instance, the sitemap - www.veer.com/sitemap/images/Sitemap0.xml.gz has 6,000 URLs and 6,000 Images. However, only 3,481 URLs and 25 images are getting indexed. The sitemap formatting seems good, but I can't figure out why Google's de-indexing the images and only 50-60% of the URLs are getting indexed. Thank you for your help!
-
Hi Cyrus,
Thank you for your note and my apologies for delay in response.
The indexation number is from Google Webmaster Tools.
The two are identical and I've tested other XML sitemap files that are in GZ format that opened fine in the browser without unzipping them or prompting a DL. The sitemaps were uploaded to GWT as the .gz files only since we have many pages to upload.
I'll check with our Dev Team regarding the XML parsing error.
Please let me know what other areas we need to look into based my answers to your questions. Thank you for your help, I greatly appreciate it!
-
Some possible suggestions:
- Make sure every image has a width and height attribute defined in the HTML. Images are much more likely to be indexed this way.
- Same with the "alt" attribute
- Make sure your image subdirectory isn't blocked (robots.txt for example)
- Same with the pages
It may be Google actually is indexing those images, but not reporting them in GWT. Do an image search and narrow results to your site, to see if your images actually appear.
Aside from accessibility issues, make sure the images are on well-linked to pages. It's much more likely for an image to be indexed on a page with good link metrics and a lack of crawl problems.
-
@Cyrus
You have given very good explanation. But, I have similar issue for image sitemap. If we are talking about crawling & indexing ratio so, it's quite good. You can know more by attachment.
You can check syntax of image sitemap by following XML.
http://www.vistastores.com/patio_umbrellas_sitemap.xml
Can you give me input ::: How can I improve crawling and indexing for images?
-
Hi Corbis,
Man, you've got some tough questions! i may have to call in some outside support on this one if we can't figure it out.
First of all, are you getting the indexation #s from Google Webmaster Tools? What I mean by this - is Google saying there are 6000 URLs in your sitemap, but they are only indexing 3,481?
When I unzipped the compressed sitemap file, it opened fine in my browser, while the 2nd uncompressed file did not. Are they identical? And have you submitted both to Google?
There could be many reasons why you're getting the XML parsing error. One issue might be in the second line, referencing http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-image/1.1/ as a Schema location, because this is an html webpage and not an XML or DTD file. You might try removing the reference to this URL, and see if that helps.
Otherwise, if Google is reporting the correct number of URLs and Images, then you know they are aware of those URLs, and the problem may not be with the sitemap. Google doesn't necessarily index all URLs in a sitemap, but instead bases it's indexing on factors like your domain authority, link structure and crawl allowance. Addressing these issues will usually help get more pages indexed than a sitemap alone.
So if you can improve internal crawl errors, duplicate content issues, and make sure there is a good navigational architecture to your site, you should see a good rise in indexations.
-
Hi Folks,
Just following up on this query. Any insights? Thank you for your help!
-Corbis
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Redirect Chain Issues - Cannot Fix
Hi All My Moz Crawl for my domain brings up 7 redirect chain errors. In each case, the original source is our old website. Strangely, only 7 of the pages show up as having redirect chains, as there are many more examples. We have added redirects from the old pages via the redirection tool in wordpress. The redirects themselves are working as expected. The redirects are from the old website, so the address http://www.oursite.co.uk/example.html to https:www.oursite.co.uk/new-page/ The chain seems to go from the original site and address to https and then onto the new domain. Screenshot link to the Moz Report https://imgur.com/a/eXRSFcD Any assistance here would be greatly appreciated. The hosts says there is nothing wrong with the.htaccess file, but I'm thinking this must be the issue. Many Thanks
Technical SEO | | ruislip180 -
Follow no-index
I have a question about the right way to not index pages: With a canonical or follow no-index. First we have a blog page: **Blogpage **
Technical SEO | | Happy-SEO
URL: /blog/
index follow Page 2 blog:
URL: /blog?=p2
index follow
rel="prev" /blog/
el="next" ?=p3 Nothing strange here i guess. But we also have other pages with chance on duplicate content: /SEO-category/
/SEO-category/view-more/ Because i don't want the "view-more" items to be indexed i want to set it on: follow no-index (follow to reach pages). But now the "view-more" also have pagination. What is the best way? Option 1:
/SEO-category/view-more/
Follow no-index /SEO-category/view-more?=p2
Follow no-index
rel="prev" /view-more/
el="next" ?=p3 Option 2: /SEO-category/view-more/
Canonical: /SEO-category/ /SEO-category/view-more?=p2
rel="prev" /view-more/
el="next" ?=p3 Option 3: Other suggests? Thanks!0 -
Google only indexed 19/94 images
I'm using Yoast SEO and have images (attachments) excluded from sitemaps, which is the recommended method (but could this be wrong?). Most of my images are in my posts; here's the sitemap for posts: https://edwardsturm.com/post-sitemap.xml I also appear on p1 for some good keywords, and my site is getting organic traffic, so I'm not sure why the images aren't being indexed. Here's an example of a well performing article: https://edwardsturm.com/best-games-youtube-2016/ Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Edward_Sturm0 -
I Lost Index Status of My Sitemap
We have a simple WordPress website for our law firm, with an English version and a Spanish version. I have created a sitemap (with appropriate language markup in the XML file) and submitted it to Webmaster Tools. Google crawled the site and accepted the sitemap last week, 24/24 pages indexed, 12 English and 12 Spanish. This week, Google decided to remove one of the pages from the index, showing 23/24 pages indexed. So, my questions are as follows: How can I find out which page was dropped from the index? If the pages are the same content, but different language, why did only one version of the page get dropped, while the other version remains? Why did the Big G drop one of my pages from the index? How can I reindex the dropped page? I know this is a fairly basic issue, and I'm embarrassed for asking, but I sure do appreciate the help.
Technical SEO | | RLG0 -
Image & Video Sitemaps - Submitted vs. Indexed
Hi Mozzers, I have read all the relevant blogs from media indexing experts like Phil Nottingham and have followed Google's best practice as well as advice from similar discussions on here. We have submitted video and image sitemaps to WT, and the image sitemap has 33 indexed from 720 submitted images, and the video 170 indexed from 738 submitted. With the image sitemap the number (33) has remained steady while the submitted has grown by over 100 in the last month. The video has shown signs of indexing new videos however but still not the amount that were submitted. Thus far, I have followed the guidelines sitemap structure as per Google. We are using Cloudfront so I have added and verified our cloudfront server in the same WT account. If anyone has any advice, it would be most appreciated. There is no duplicate content and the robots.txt is not blocking anything within the sitemap. Image sitemap: view-source:http://www.clowdy.com/sitemap.images.xml
Technical SEO | | Morrreau0 -
Sitemap nos being indexed
Hi! How are you? I'm having a problem: for some reason I don't understand, Google Webmasters Tool isn't indexing the sitemaps I'm uploading. One of them is http://chelagarto.com/index.php?option=com_xmap&sitemap=1&view=xml&lang=en . Do you see what could be the problem? It says it only indexed 2 website. I've already sent this Sitemap several times and I'm always getting the same result. I'd really use some advice. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | arielbortz0 -
Why is my office page not being indexed?
Good Morning from 24 degrees C partly cloudy wetherby UK 🙂 This page is not being indexed by Google:
Technical SEO | | Nightwing
http://www.sandersonweatherall.co.uk/office-to-let-leeds/ 1st Question Ive checked robots txt file no problems, i'm in the midst of updating the xml sitemap (it had the old one in place). It only has one link from this page http://www.sandersonweatherall.co.uk/Site-Map/ So is the reason oits not being indexed just a simple case of lack if SEO juice from inbound links so the remedy lies in routing more inbound links to the offending page? 2nd question Is the quickest way to diagnose if a web address is not being indexed to cut and paste the url in the Google search box and if it doesnt return the page theres a problem? Thanks in advance, David0 -
301 redirect issues
Hi all, I'm hoping someone will be able to help me with an extermley frustrating problem with 301 redirects in .htaccess. Basically I'm trying to redirect some old pages (from our old website) that stil rank to the new equivilent. For example - old url = www.domain.com/frames/news/company-news/news-reader.php?newsStoryID=395 New www.domain.com/news/article-title I've tried the simple redirect 301 /frames/news/company-news/news-reader.php?newsStoryID=395 http://www.domain.com/news/article-title But this doesnt work. I've also tried - RewriteEngine on
Technical SEO | | EclipseLegal
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^newsStoryID=395$
RewriteRule ^/news-reader.php$ http://www.domain.com/news/article-title/? [L,R=301] Could anyone help? I've followed lots of tutorials that all match the above but it just doesn't work! The only other thing within the htaccess file is from wordpress for pretty permalinks - BEGIN WordPress <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]</ifmodule> END WordPress Many thanks in advance!0